Extended Import/Export Configuration – Part 2

This is a sequel blog to my post about the Export/Import Configuration feature. Along with BizTalk Reports and Knowledge Base, we also brought import/export capabilities for Dashboards and Custom Widgets.

A BizTalk administrator needs to perform many tasks every day. When the time comes to analyse or visualize BizTalk data, it can be difficult to break it down and discover exactly what you need to know. By building a BizTalk360 dashboard, the administrator can get a better look at exactly the information of a specific environment. BizTalk admins can create such insightful dashboard for four different sections in BizTalk360:

Operations

Analytics

EDI

ESB

The Dashboard options are great and they help to monitor and troubleshoot your environments proactively. However, the downside is that, it can take some time to craft the different dashboards you want and subject matter expertise to display the relevant metrics needed to troubleshoot a specific issue. The Dashboard Import/Export feature allows you to export your fine-tuned, purpose-built Dashboard screens, and import the ones that have been shared with you.

Exporting Dashboards

BizTalk360 admins can export all the available dashboards under each environment in BizTalk360. Using this capability, users can import all the configured dashboards or any specific ones.

Scenario 1: For their business needs, BizTalk administrators can manage multiple environments. If the admin wants to migrate the Dashboard configuration from one environment to another, the Admin can export the configuration in one environment and import it into another one. Even the globally created dashboards can be imported and exported.

Importing Dashboards

The BizTalk admins can import the exported Dashboard configurations from another environment. The admin can create new dashboards and can also overwrite existing dashboards in the target environment.

Having said already, the Dashboards are user specific. This means that users, for which dashboards will be exported and imported between environments, need to exist in the target environment. So, while importing dashboards from one environment to another, make sure the user is existing in the User Access Policy screen. If, by any chance, that specific user does not have a profile in the destination environment, it can be created by using the User Access Policy import capability.

If the user does not have the access for the particular environment in the User Access Policy screen, then the admin cannot import the dashboard for the specific user. Hence, the user must be available in the destination environment.

In case, the user may exist in a Windows NT Group, then the admin can import the dashboard by providing the NT Group name.

The result of the imported Dashboards is shown in a nicely formatted grid view, with an explanation of what happened with each Dashboard during the import process.

Exporting Custom Widgets

The import and export custom widgets implementation is mainly to handle the custom widgets in dashboards. Because, when a dashboard contains any custom widgets, then it will not get exported along with the dashboard functionality. The user can export the needed custom widgets along with the dashboard from one environment to another environment.

Note: The widgets are not environment specific. All the available widgets will be accessible for all the environments.

Importing Custom Widgets

Importing custom widgets is done by uploading an export file. Using the import functionality, the widget can be imported into other environment or used to restore widgets to the same environment. The Import process takes into consideration, if the widget already exists in the destination environment (widgets are not duplicated). If so, it will be overwritten.

In case the user still wants to import that widget into the destination environment, the user can edit the original name of the widget, thereby making sure that the widget will become created in the destination environment.

The results of an import are shown in a nicely formatted grid view with an explanation of what happened with each widget during the import process.

Scenario 2: While Exporting and importing a dashboard into another environment, the dashboard can contain custom widgets for any kind of data visualization or analysis. Those custom widgets won’t be imported with the Dashboard because, in BizTalk360, the custom widgets are handled separately. In such case, the user can Export the Dashboard along with the custom widgets and import then in the required environment. This will reduce the time on manual creation of each custom widget.

Conclusion

The Import/Export functionality in BizTalk360, tremendously reduces the time of migrating the data configuration form one environment to another. For the business user, it helps to create dashboards in multiple environments and the user can create the dashboards into collaborative group easily.